Andorka: "We broke new ground"

Hungarian Sandor Andorka is the chairman of the EHF Technical Refereeing Committee (TRC). As a member of the EHF Competitions Commission he was involved in the organisation of the EHF Referee Seminar 2011 in Vienna with special focus on the preparation for the Men’s EHF EURO 2012 in Serbia.

eurohandball.com: What is your review of the EHF Referee Seminar 2011 in Vienna?

Sandor Andorka: On our way to Serbia we broke new grounds. This time, the rules of the game were not the main topic, as we changed our strategy to inviting external experts, for instance coaches and psychologists.

It is like a puzzle with a lot of small pieces. All referees are educated well by their national federations, but we recognized that we could still work on their personality development. So we focused on topics like confidence or communication to players and coaches. The workshop was carried out in very professional manners using scientific methods.

eurohandball.com: How did the referees react to this new type of workshop?

Sandor Andorka: Very positive, there was a great acceptance for the new methods. The referees found it very important to see other viewpoints and to improve their knowledge in several fields with different experts.

eurohandball.com: Is this a new generation of referees?

Sandor Andorka: We invited 15 referee couples from all over Europe to this EHF EURO 2012 preparation seminar. In the second half of October we will nominate twelve of them for the final tournament in Serbia, ten of them will stay there after the Preliminary Round.

So in the upcoming weeks we will watch their performance very closely. Then we will consequently nominate the best. It is a huge advantage that most of these couples were officiating at the Men’s World Championship 2011 in Sweden. They are developing in a positive way.

We invited only three new couples, all others know each other quite well already, as they made much of their way side by side.

Most of them started together at EHF Younger Age Category events. Then they finished their IHF referee course, before being nominated for IHF Youth and Junior events, followed by Men’s or Women’s World Championships.

This group of referees is very uniform without any ‘lone wolfs’. All are aware of the importance of a functioning team. Their comradeship and team spirit is great.

eurohandball.com: It is a tradition that only one couple per national federation gets nominated for major events. What is your opinion about that?

Sandor Andorka: Normally there is one top couple per nation, and it is our duty to reach as many countries as possible. So in that respect it is good that only one couple per national federation will be nominated.

But in some countries we have more than one top couple. It may be a hard decision for the couple who will not be nominated.

But this national competition also has an increasing effect on the referee’s motivation, which leads to a higher performance level. There are no places guaranteed for anybody, only the performance level is decisive for the nominations.